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F.C.C.’s Chief Hires a Critic of the Agency

WASHINGTON — Tom Wheeler was sworn in on Monday as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and promptly named to his senior staff Gigi B. Sohn, one of the agency’s most outspoken critics but a supporter of the new leader.

Mr. Wheeler, 67, a venture capital investor and former Obama campaign fund-raiser, named Ms. Sohn as special counsel for external affairs. Although several public-interest groups warned that Mr. Wheeler’s past as a telecommunications industry lobbyist might cause him to favor those companies as F.C.C. chairman, Ms. Sohn, as president of the F.C.C. watchdog group Public Knowledge, said at the time of his nomination that she believed he would be independent.

On Monday, some public-interest groups that have been critical of Mr. Wheeler expressed optimism about Ms. Sohn’s appointment. “We hope her appointment signals a willingness in the Wheeler administration to engage more directly with the public interest community,” said Craig Aaron, the president of Free Press, a nonpartisan advocacy group. “We have high expectations of her and the new chairman.”

Ms. Sohn said at the time of Mr. Wheeler’s nomination that telecommunications “was a very different industry” when he was a lobbyist. But, she added, “he understands how the regulatory process can be hijacked by incumbents to thwart competition.”

Also sworn in on Monday was an F.C.C. commissioner, Michael O’Rielly, a former adviser to Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican. Mr. O’Rielly and Mr. Wheeler put the F.C.C.’s five-member board back at full strength, with three Democrats and two Republicans.

Ms. Sohn, in her new role, will work with legislators and intergovernmental agencies, an F.C.C. spokesman said. Under Ms. Sohn, Public Knowledge had been a sharp critic of the previous chairman, Julius Genachowski, particularly over the commission’s failure to reclassify Internet service into a regulatory category that would treat it as a public utility, potentially subject to the same oversight and rate regulation as telephone companies.

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Gigi B. Sohn, the president of a Federal Communications Commission watchdog group, will work with legislators and intergovernmental agencies in her role new at the agency.Credit
Alex Wong/Getty Images

An F.C.C. spokesman cast doubt on that possibility on Monday. “The new chairman’s office is staffed with people who have advocated many different positions in the past, and it would be unwarranted to draw any conclusions about what he might do as chairman based on the past advocacy of his staff,” said the spokesman, Mark Wigfield.

In addition to Ms. Sohn, Mr. Wheeler announced 11 other appointments, half of whom had ties either to the wireless industry or its regulation. Ruth Milkman, appointed as Mr. Wheeler’s chief of staff, previously served for three years as chief of the F.C.C.’s wireless telecommunications bureau and as a senior adviser to two F.C.C. chairmen, Mr. Genachowski and Reed Hundt.

Wireless telecommunications will be at the top of the F.C.C.’s agenda in the coming months as the agency prepares for multiple auctions of wireless spectrum, including one that involves getting television stations to give up or to move their spots on the public airwaves.

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Mr. Wheeler named as special counsel Diane J. Cornell, who worked with him as a wireless industry lobbyist; she was vice president for regulatory policy at CTIA, the Wireless Association. Her other experience includes time as the chief of staff of the F.C.C.’s wireless bureau and as a legal adviser to three F.C.C. chairmen.

It was Mr. Wheeler’s time as the head of two telecommunications trade groups that caused concern among public-interest and consumer groups. From 1992 to 2004, he was chief executive of CTIA, the Wireless Association, and from 1979 to 1984, he served as president of the National Cable Television Association.

Most recently, Mr. Wheeler was a managing director at Core Capital Partners, a Washington investment firm with $350 million under management. Mr. Wheeler’s wife, Carol, once worked in government affairs for the National Association of Broadcasters.

Through a spokesman, Ms. Sohn declined to comment on Monday. She begins work at the commission next week.

Much has changed since the beginning of Mr. Genachowski’s tenure as F.C.C. chairman in 2009. Mobile Future, a lobbying group, said Monday that 56 percent of American adults now owned smartphones, up from 20 percent in 2009. Roughly 752,000 jobs have been created in the applications industry, the group said, with mobile data use climbing tenfold.

Correction: November 6, 2013

An article on Tuesday about a decision by the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission to hire a critic of the agency misstated part of the name of a lobbying group that reported that 56 percent of Americans now own smartphones, up from 20 percent in 2009. The group is Mobile Future, not Wireless Future.

A version of this article appears in print on November 5, 2013, on Page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: F.C.C.’s Chief Hires a Critic Of the Agency. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe